Story

- What fell was a coin. What fell clashed into the sound of a coin, clattered along the narrow sound, and after wobbling round and round, gently, at last, stopped.

The subject of his inquiry was the heads or tails of a coin. He would toss the coin from anywhere, and wherever he was, the sound of a falling coin continued without end. Weal. Woe. Happiness. Sadness. Memory. Oblivion. Life. Death. The sequence of events was too haphazard to find a pattern. He recorded this fact. He wanted to understand. However, every inquiry in the world ends in the same murmurs. What is knowing. The lull of the future. The suspension of possibility. The insight from out of the blue. At last, he decides to betray the judgment of the coin. Because he has grown weary. From inside a dark room, he tossed the last coin of his life. As the universe spins, this is how it is. Weal. Death. Happiness. Oblivion. Woe. Happiness. Life. Sadness. The disorderly origins of binary opposition. A choice like this defers conclusion. Because from within this dark room, the coin is nowhere to be seen. In search of the coin, he crawls into every nook and corner, toward the darker depths of the room. By the time the landlord unlocked the door with a key, there was no one in the room. His furnishings went toward his overdue rent. When the last of the furniture was moved out, the coin on the floor became the lot of the movers.

Story

- Winter night rabbit worries.

At that moment, I looked outside the window. And under a streetlamp, a dime a dozen and so dim, bordering on darkness as if better suited for startling someone, there was a small and white object. I thought the object to be arabbit. It was a rabbit and became even more still a rabbit, with long ears and red eyes, hop-hopping around. It was that kind of rabbit, I’m certain of this. Really, a rabbit under a streetlamp. In a fit of excitement I shouted, Everyone, it’s a rabbit—there’s a rabbit over there. But not only was no one around, the rabbit didn’t budge. Unable to tear my gaze from the rabbit, I began to grow suspicious that this rabbit that didn’t try to hide its long ears, or blink its red eyes, or hop-hop away was perhaps a white pebble or a discarded bread bag. A small, white rock with long ears and red eyes. A breadbag that hop-hops away to disappear somewhere. The form of the rabbit with the eyes of a white pebble and the long ears of a bread bag sits still under the streetlamp, and so I become filled with doubt—it can’t not be a rabbit, it couldn’t possibly be a rabbit, could it—until at last—Everyone, that isn’t a rabbit, that’s no rabbit. But there’s no one around, and now it grows dark outside the window. I was so torn between the rabbit and the not-rabbit—I had even resolved to no longer gaze out the window. But still, on bitter winter nights, when a stubborn wind visits to rattle the windows and you’re too chilled to the bone to fall asleep, when a night like this visits, I can’t help but worry about the rabbit—if it’s too cold outside, if the rabbit is safe and sound—I get the urge to glance out the window.

Translatedby Stine An